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Caitlin Daly

daly-caitlin_dr-midori-arima-scholarship-anthropology_400pixels.jpgCollege affiliation: Oakes

Department: Anthropology

What Award/ Scholarship did you receive? Dr. Midori Arima Scholarship in Anthropology

When do you expect to graduate? 2022

Where do you call home? Hayward, California

With all of the choices for college, what made UC Santa Cruz stand out? Of all the UC’s, I believe that UC Santa Cruz attracts those with a certain generosity of spirit. I figured that students who were motivated by things like status, social-climbing, superficiality, or who prioritize what society thinks rather than following their internal compasses would be drawn to schools like UCB and UCLA. This is not to say that students at either school should be characterized this way whatsoever, nor that UCSC is immune to attracting individuals with such traits, but instead speaking in terms of a proportional frequency of these characteristics in the study body at large.

When I think about faculty, some outsiders might be tempted to think that the greatest academics would be drawn to other semi-local schools like UCB, UCSF, or Stanford. If I put myself into a professor’s shoes and ask myself where I would want to live, Santa Cruz is the easy winner. I believe that when given a choice, the wisest professor would choose this landscape over any other. I believed that UCSC professors would understand the world in a way that cannot be measured by the number of acclaimed articles they’ve published, the so-called prestige of an alma mater, or the prestige of an award. Their academic knowledge, competency, and willingness to convey either stems from a place of quiet self-evident revelation rather than insecurity-driven braggadocio or desires of grandeur.

I knew that I wanted to be by the ocean. I think our evolutionary programming has designed us to happiest near large bodies of water. Beach towns march to a different drum. UCSB and UCSD would have accomplished this, but I did not want to be in Southern California. The comparatively urban environment negates some of the aforementioned slower-paced seaside tranquility that brings out a different side of people I just mentioned. Santa Cruz is closer to my hometown and the majority of my family.

-Lastly, I think some of the core values of UCSC (that I did not realize were formally enumerated until my orientation) capture the je nais se pa that I could not quite iterate when I chose to commit: cooperative, open, purposeful, caring, and celebrative. There are endless core values that could have made the list. These character traits are prioritized here for a reason.

What is your field of focus? Anthropology (it is my goal to add a legal studies minor and a politics minor in the coming months.

What do you hope to do once you graduate from UC Santa Cruz? I want to work in public health policy in some capacity. This may involve politics or law, or perhaps a master’s in nursing specializing in a public health. I’m desperate for this country to adopt single-payer healthcare. I’m prepared to dedicate my life to alleviating suffering in any way, big or small.

What is one memorable moment that stands out for you as a student here? The redwood trees remind me of some of my favorite childhood memories. Growing up, my extended family on my father’s side had a 200-acre ranch about 30 miles outside of Eureka, California along the Eel River, on the Avenue of the Giants. My grandfather and his brothers purchased the land sometime in the late 1920’s (although I am 34, grandfather was the youngest child and was born in 1902, my father was the youngest child and was born in 1948, and I am also the youngest child). They were all born in Ireland, and as you might imagine, were Catholics with huge families, so there were many siblings. Over the years, all the extended family spent our summers there. It foraged kinship bonds that are not very common in America; there is a closeness between cousins, second cousins, cousins once-removed, aunts, great aunts, and so on. All the 30 or so kids ran free, as did all of our city-dwelling dogs. We spent our days doing things like swimming, finding new eddies in the river, traversing trails through the trees, racing horses to the barn, having nightly bonfires, picking blackberries, and yes, encountering our fair share of giant banana slugs. 

Sadly, by the time I was about 13, diseases of addiction had taken hold of two of my dad’s cousins, and they moved onto the rent-free ranch full-time. The side-effects that accompany addiction moved in too. Some very terrible things began to happen seemingly overnight, such as drug-dealer violence, breaking into homes, and harboring young runaways in a way that made them very vulnerable. Ultimately, the cousins had inherited a percent of a stake in ownership. Selling the ranch was the only solution left, as painful as it was to do. While Pacific Lumber was eager to get their hands on old-growth redwood trees and would have paid an unthinkable amount of money for the property, the Daly’s ended up selling the property to the State of California so that it could be protected. I am so proud of that. A large portion of the land was also donated, and the Daly Memorial Grove sits along the Avenue of the Giants, where it will remain untouched (even by the parks department) as long as the State of California exists.

Sometimes when I am on campus and the wind blows in just the right way, it rustles through the redwood branches. It will make a familiar sound that transports me back to days gone by; perhaps a time when I was galivanting through the forest with my beloved black lab, or the first time I was finally big enough to use the rope-swing. If I close my eyes after a rainstorm the smell transports me back to waking up on a foggy summer morning. For those brief moments, time does not exist and the universe stands still.

What is your one piece of advice for incoming students about life at UC Santa Cruz? Give yourself permission to live a balanced life. You can value learning as a standalone virtue, rather than as a means to materiality. You do not have to take 19 units a quarter to prove your worth. Take time for joy. There is a part of all of us that has been programmed, but most of us do not see it because it is so familiar. We know no other way to be. If you can look underneath that programming, there is a part of each of us that is not programmable. This is the human part of us. Set your compass to align with the part of you that cannot be programmed to feel sincere satisfaction at the core of your being; it will not lead you astray.

How will this scholarship impact your academic life /research? I was accepted into an internship program in Bolivia over the summer. I will be making clinical rounds shadowing physicians in a variety of contexts and locations. Bolivia is a case-study for implementing universal healthcare in a country with very limited financial resources. The internship is unpaid. It has required a lot of financial sacrifice. I needed support to buy my airline tickets, purchase scrubs to wear, and we are also required to supply all of our own PPE.